A fire-boweled engine with a grimy-faced demon leaning out of his red-hot cab, and, on every alternate night, a green eye with a black pupil which winked a signal from that same heat-roaring cab and from a dirt-colored frame shanty in a dirt-brown yard, where a naked tree stretched its thin arms against the sky, an answering eye which gleamed through a bandana-bound lantern and outlined the Hebe-like silhouette of a woman in the window.
Then the flash of a mahogany-lined dining-car with nodding _vis-a-vis_, pink-shaded candles and white-coated, black-faded genii of the bowl and weal; an occasional vague figure peering through cupped hands out from an electric-lighted berth; a plate-glass observation-car with figures lounging in shallow leather chairs like oil-kings and merchant princes and only sons in a Fifth Avenue club, and a great trailing plume of smoke that lingered for a moment and died in the still tingling air.
For a full half-hour, even an hour, after the Imperial flyer had gouged through the village the yellow lights of Slateville burned on behind its unwashed windows, which were half opaque with train-dust and the grimy finger-prints of children. Then they began to flick out, here, there--here, there. In a slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, in an out-of-balance bookkeeper's office in the Slateville Varnish Factory, in the Red Trunk general store and post-office, the parson's study, a maiden's bedroom, in the dirt-colored frame house, another slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, another, and yet another. Here, there--here, there.
The clerk in the signal-tower slumped in his chair, the doctor's tin-tired buggy rattled up a hilly street that was shaped like a crooked finger, and away beyond the melancholy stretches of close-bitten grazing-land and runty corn-fields the flyer shrieked upward, and the miles scuttled the echoes back to Slateville.
On an alternate night that was as singingly still as the inside of a cup the flyer tore through the village with the cinders tattooing against its panes and the white eye searching like a near-sighted cylcopean monster.
But from the red fireman's cab the green lantern with the black bull's-eye painted on the outward side dangled unlit, and in the dirt-colored house, behind drawn shades, the Hebe-like figure was crouched in another woman's arms, and, in the room adjoining, John Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.
Who-o-o-p! Who-o-o-p!
"Listen, Cottie, listen!"
"'Sh-h-h-h, darlin'."
The crouching women crouched closer together, a dove-note in the crooning voice of one like the coo of a mate. "'Sh-h-h, darlin'."
"There it goes, Cottie. Gawd, just like nothing had happened."
"'Sh-h-h, dearie; lay still!"
"Listen. The engine's playin' a different tune on the tracks; it's lighter and smoother."
"Yes--yes--'sh-h-h."
"Just hear, Cottie; they got the old diner on. I know her screech."
"I hear, dearie."
"And the Cleveland sleeper wasn't touched, neither. Hear her. They say she didn't even leave the tracks. He used to say she had a rattle like a dice-box. Just the same, it was the smooth-runnin' Washington sleeper lit on the engine. Listen, Cottie, oh, listen! Just like nothin' had happened."
"Don't tremble so, darlin'. That's life every time--it just rides over its dead."
"He hated the flyer, oh--oh--"
"Don't take on so, Della darlin'. He died on his job."
"He hated the flyer; he--"
"He could have jumped like Jim Dirkey did, and lived to face the shame of it, but he died on his job. You can always say your man died on his job, Della darlin'."
Della raised her crouching head and brushed the hair back from her eyes. Helen's face that launched a thousand ships was no more fair.
"That he did--didn't he, Cottie? He died on his job."
"Sure he did, darlin'--sure he did."
"You remember--you remember, Cottie, the first night they put him on the flyer?"
"Try to forget it, Della, and don't go gettin' all excited--there--there."
"I was over home that night with you and maw, and--and he came in for supper with the news and--and he was like a funeral about bein' promoted."
"Yes, I remember."
"Even with the extra pay he was for stickin' to the accommodation, because he loved her insides."
"And because it was a chance to spite you."
"But I--I was all for the flyer. I told him he was afraid of her speed, and he hauled off and nearly hit me for callin' him a coward before you and maw, and you up and--"
"He was rough with you, Della, but he wouldn't 'a' dared do it with me there. I had him bluffed, all righty; he wouldn't 'a' done it with me and maw there."
"Lots maw would 'a' cared. Poor maw! She never knew nothing else but abuse, herself."
"Paw wasn't so bad, Della--he always brought home the envelope."
"John--he made me eat the words when we got home that night; but, just the samey, he--he wouldn't 'a' took the Imperial, Cottie, if I hadn't nagged him to it--he wouldn't have!"
"Well, what if he wouldn't? You wouldn't 'a' married him, neither, if he hadn't nagged you to it when paw died, and he knew you had a stepmother that was devilin' and abusin' the life out of us--you."
"He used to say, when he came home with a face as black as a crazy devil's, that coaling the flyer was just like stoking hell. She ate and ate and bellowed for more. He hated the flyer, he did. He stoked her with more hate than coal, and I drove him to it, Cottie. I put the hole in his head."
"Aw, no, dearie! Nobody ever made John Blaney do nothing he didn't want to do. He's dead now and can't take up for hisself, but he was hard as nails--even if he was my brother-in-law."
"'Sh-h-h, Cottie, little sister."
"I always say, Della, Gawd knows I ain't got a cinch! I hate the factory like I hate a green devil, and you know what it is to live around maw's doggin' and abuse, but it's like I tole Joe the other night: I wouldn't marry the finest man livin' before I'd had my chance to try out what I had my heart set on. I told him he could save his breath. I'm goin' to take a chance on gettin' out of this dump--not on tyin' up to it."
"Joe's a good boy, Cottie. He's a saint alongside of what John was. Steady fellows and foremen ain't layin' around loose, dearie. He's a good boy, Cottie--none finer."
"Della! You ain't--"
"No; I ain't urgin' you, Cottie. I ain't sayin' you're not right to hold off, but Joe's the finest boy in these parts, ain't he?"
"That ain't sayin' much. You wasn't a big-enough gambler, Della. You remember how I begged you the night before the wedding to hold off. I ain't goin' to make your mistake. You ought 'a' done what Lily done--took a chance. Tessie says her pictures were all pasted up outside of Indianapolis last week. Lily Divette in the 'Twinkling Belles.' If Lily Maloney with her baby face and--"
"I--I stuck to John to the end, though--didn't I, Cottie? Nobody can say I didn't stick to him--can they, Cottie?"
"No, no! Now don't go gettin' excited again, dearie."
"Oh, Gawd, Gawd, Cottie. I--I feel--so--so--queer!"
"Yes, darlin', I know!"
The cryptic quiescence of death hung over the unpainted pine bedchamber and chilled their skin like damp in a cave seeps through clothing. From the far side of the bed a lamp wavered against a tin reflector and danced through their hair like firelight in copper; wind galloped over the flat country, shook the box-shaped house, and whinnied on every flue.
Cottie, whose head was Tiziano's Flora yet more radiant, held her sister's equally radiant head close to her warm bosom, and through the calico of her open-at-the-throat waist, her heart pumped the organ-prelude of Life--Life in the midst of Death.
"Della darlin'--don't--don't be afraid to talk to me. Ain't--ain't I your--sister?"
"What--what--"
"I--I know--what you're thinkin', Della--"
"'Sh-h-h; not now!"
"You're thinkin' that you're--that you're _free_, now, darlin'--free--ain't you?"
"'Sh-h-h-h!"
"Free, darlin'--think--there ain't nothin' can hold you! A hundred dollars' benefit-money and--"
"Gawd, Cottie--Cottie--'sh-h-h! Him layin' in there dead! It--it ain't no time to talk about that now. Anyways, you're the one to go. I'll stay with maw."
Her words tumbled, and her tones were galvanized with fear and fear's offspring, superstition. She glanced toward the half-open door with eyes two shades too dark.
"No, no, Della; you're the oldest. You go first, and I--I'll stick it out with maw till--she's gettin' feebler every day, Delia, and I'll be joinin' you some day not far off."
"'Sh-h-h; it ain't right. I--I'll give her--half the benefit-money, Cottie, but it's a sin to--"
"You and folks make me sick. If the devil hisself was to die you'd snivel and bury him in priest's robes. What John _was_ he _was_--dyin' didn't change it. Ten days ago you were standin' at this very window answering his signal and hating him with every swing of the lantern."
"Cottie, you mustn't!"
"I used to see you sit across from him at the table, and when he yelled at you or wanted to pet you I've seen you run your finger-nails into you palms from hatin' him, clear in till they bled, like you used to do when you was a kid and hated any one, and now, just because he's dead--"